Why Jonathan Caouette Isn't Necessarily Happy with 'Walk Away Renée,' But You Will Be

When Jonathan Caouette made his feature debut "Tarnation," he took the indie world by storm. The miniscule dollar figure he made it for (before preparing it for a festival and theatrical runs) made headlines, and Gus Van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell came on board as Executive Producers, eager to usher the film into the world. For almost a decade, Caouette has been sitting with the footage of his life -- footage of his grandparents, his boyfriend, his son, and, most notably, his mother Renée Leblanc.

When Jonathan Caouette made his feature debut "Tarnation," he took the indie world by storm. The miniscule dollar figure he made it for (before preparing it for a festival and theatrical runs) made headlines, and Gus Van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell came on board as Executive Producers, eager to usher the film into the world. For almost a decade, Caouette has been sitting with the footage of his life -- footage of his grandparents, his boyfriend, his son, and, most notably, his mother Renée Leblanc.

Throughout both "Tarnation" and "Walk Away Renée," Caouette shows the tender love between himself and his mother. Some moments in both films turn less than tender; Leblanc came into mental illness after sustained electroshock therapy earlier in life. Now, lithium, which can be lethal, is the only thing that stabilizes her.

Indiewire caught up with Caouette in anticipation of the film's North American premiere at BAMcinemaFest and on VOD through SundanceNow. Throughout our conversation, it was clear that Caouette, who had gone through the emotional roller coaster of releasing the story of his life to the public once before, was feeling nervous and somewhat unfulfilled. His anxiety is not warranted; the film is a solid and often sweet tribute to his mother and his own work as a diligent family member. Caouette has said before that he's done making documentaries, and the melancholy one senses for how "Walk Away Renée" stands comes not because the film is a bad film. Rather, the sadness emanates from his self-imposed cutting-off of a source of great catharsis: his ability to show us his life, in immaculately told personal documentaries.

So let's start at the beginning...you're working with your home movies again. What made you decide to do another movie using the same kinds of images -- home videos of your family -- as "Tarnation"?

In a nutshell, I made this film that was kind of made out of -- [pauses] You know what's weird? This is the first interview I've done with English as the first language. During the interviews in France [where the recut film premiered theatrically earlier this year], I could assume that they were thinking I'm saying something really poignant. [laughs] When "Tarnation" came out, I met this guy, Pierre-Paul Puljiz -- and his editor Noam Roubah. We forged a relationship and worked on some interesting projects together. Somewhere along the way, we knew we would embark on something ambitious. I could never foresee in a million years that I'd make anything that closely resembled a follow-up to "Tarnation."

We were working on one project together and then had to remove ourselves from it. We invested our own sweat equity and passion in the project, established momentum and a trustworthy relationship. Wanted to continue doing something else, we wanted to transpose that effort into another project. So he asked me what I wanted to do, and I told him I have all this footage that's basically b-roll from "Tarnation" -- no, b-roll from my life. All this stuff that wasn't a part of the final cut of "Tarnation." Being the OCD person that I am, I worried that if a glass of milk spilled on the hard drive where all the home videos were, all of it would be gone forever. One of my first ideas for utilizing it was to augment a 10- or 20- year anniversary of Tarnation, but it ended up becoming a part of a new idea, this new film "Walk Away Renée." I wanted to make an experimental verite film -- a road trip movie [moving my mother from Texas to New York], and even if nothing happened on the road, seeing what inherently happened. The mundaneness of it would have been a pretty interesting experiment. That was the first idea of making "Walk Away Renée," but later on down the road, it occurred to me that I had all this other footage. It went from being an experimental road movie. That older footage became a divisive thing -- it became a sort of re-paraphrasing of Tarnation in some ways, based on how the road trip ended up happening.

So why did you show one version in Cannes and decide to cut it afterwards?

It took me 3 and half weeks to make the initial 2 hour version of "Tarnation," which was culled down to 88 minutes over time. This film took three years to make, to realize what the film is going to be. With all due respect to everyone that was involved, "Walk Away Renee" is a frustrating film for me. I think it's a good film, a cool film. It's frustrating film for me because it doesn't ultimately express the dynamic that I want to express. It's because of the circumstances surrounding the content. It's a personal film, but it doesn't totally go to the emotional hilt that I think even that I think "Tarnation" did. I have to be okay with that, because I know that "Tarnation" was an unprecedented thing -- I didn't try to make another one of those with this, this was sort of an organic thing that happened. It was really made by happenstance.

The story of my mother and what's happened post-"Tarnation" has been an abundance of stories. There's so much in epic proportions that happened. I had to stop making movies for the most part. The fact that "Walk Away Renée" exists is a miracle, let alone something that is adjacent to "Tarnation" in some ways. I was proactively taking care of my mother and grandfather. My family for me comes first. I had to be this sort of immediate perpetual caretaker of both my father and my mother. It was the nature of the reality of what was happening. I had to be so proactively embedded in that caretaking. I didn't have a lot of time to do it. As a result of that, I wasn't able to get the level of magnitude of story that could have resided in this film. I didn't know I was making a film, but I still had all this footage that I really wanted to see the light of day.

Update: Caouette added in an email after this article first ran: "Do not get me wrong. I like this film! (ha ha). It's just when you go back in your minds eye and think about all the different movies it can be, it jacks you up psychologically. But that's my obsessiveness I reckon! ha" In response to the question on the second page of this interview that asks him to elaborate on his future plans, Caouette adds: "I must say after this film, I am never ever ever going to make another personal documentary as long as I live. This will not be like Seven Up! Ha ha. I'm definitely segueing into making narrative fictional films. I want to pause making documentaries for awhile. ALTHOUGH.......I may have just ONE MORE DOC I may wanna make I'm excited making narrative fictional films that feel like documentaries." He also divulged details about two of the projects he is working on now: "One is a project with the great and brilliant David Henry Hwang and another one is a script that I'm writing myself for the first time."